Pale pink velvet for Kitty’s nose?

One strand of Opal (Winter’s Garden) and Kid Gloss mohair (for fuzz factor) held together throughout. I had to cut and wind-off each of the colorways from the skein to get the stripes/colors closer to matching Mr. Kitty’s.

Had to rip back to the mid-tummy as I had a lot of trouble following this pattern and it was really not looking like a cat body.

More pattern trouble: wanted the head turned inward, but it is turned further than I wanted it to be. Well, may look more realistically cat-like this way.

Decided to needle-felt over markings once knitting is completed in order to delineate the markings correctly. Fingers crossed; it will look good. This self-stripe pattern is not good for tabby markings, but the colors are correct for Kiki. There will be a good deal of finishing after the knitting -- facial features, whiskers, paw pads, and stripes.

March 2016 update: Needle-felted/finished entire head, added false eyelashes cut to size (apologies to my brand new set of Diorshow lashes), and whiskers.

Needlefelting is taking for-ever-and-a day, but very satisfied with the results. Will work on body to get markings correct, next.

Note, need to adjust paw-pad colors and add some sort of weight to bottoms of paws or legs to anchor in a realistic way.

July 2017 update: Yes, it’s been about a year since I worked on it!

Glued on spiraled up drapery weights that I colored with black marker to the bottom of paws to keep his paws grounded. It’s the perfect amount of weight to keep him sitting perfectly upright, but wish I had known about “bead-weights” they make for toy-filling before I had glued those on. They are bulky and don’t look that great. Due to hardness of the dried glue, I can’t felt into them. Do I dare pry them off and risk ripping the knitting? I’m thinking “no,” right now. Will re-assess when I get to the felting of the bottoms of the paws and paw-pads (one of which was glued on has already fallen off and not to be found).

Felting the markings on is going well. Referring to photos and using dark charcoal, platinum grey, mink brown, lighter brown/sandalwood and another light tan color -- all Thistledown yarns -- alpaca/mohair fibers that I’ve stripped off the core as much as possible and used the “fuzz” of the yarn without core to simulate fur and match markings.

I previously took off the whiskers to redo since I found a long, flexible, soft sculpture doll needle in my craft supplies which I think will work better to apply the beading floss for whiskers.

The Two-Year Birthday Gift! Used beading string for the whiskers with 3” soft sculpture/doll needles. Used double-long strands of thread; two or three strings at a time; threaded into eye of needle; poked through from one side of face to other and knotted on one side of face only, pulling slightly from opposite side to pull the knot just under surface. Added a bit of Berry Thistledown (dark pink to the nose, as the light pink wasn’t showing up).

Did not attempt to remove the weights from paws - they are really on there. Just felted more wool in and around to cover. Broke about 6 felting needles during this entire project. Voila! it’s done!